An ancient tavern believed to be more then 2,100 years old has been found in the town of Lattes, southern France, making it the oldest Roman restaurant found in the Mediterranean. They also found evidence that while Romanization changed the locals' dining habits, it didn't do much for the cuisine. Evidently some things never change, though. The excavators in the town of Lattes found indoor gristmills and ovens for baking pita, each about one meter across. This oven, called a tabouna or taboon, is still used throughout the Middle East and Israel. In another room, across the courtyard from the...

With broken beer mugs and copper coins that had slipped through the floorboards, you could be forgiven for thinking its customers had stepped out a few moments ago. But this tavern in the heart of the Russian capital Moscow last served beer nearly 300 years ago. Now the ancient beer bar has been unearthed, revealing broken plates and tankards dating back to the 16th century.

With broken beer mugs and copper coins that had slipped through the floorboards, you could be forgiven for thinking its customers had stepped out a few moments ago. But this tavern in the heart of the Russian capital Moscow last served beer nearly 300 years ago. Now the ancient beer bar has been unearthed, revealing broken plates and tankards dating back to the 16th century.

On one tablet excavated from the area we can see a human head eating from a bowl, meaning “ration”, and a conical vessel, meaning “beer”. Scattered around are scratches recording the amount of beer for a particular worker. It’s the world’s oldest known payslip.

Georgian-Italian archaeological expedition of Ca' Foscari University of Venice in collaboration with the Georgian Museum of Tbilisi has discovered vine pollen in a zoomorphic vessel used in ritual ceremonies by the Kura-Araxes population. In the archeological site of Aradetis Orgora, 100 kilometers to the west of the Georgian capital Tbilisi, Ca' Foscari's expedition led by Elena Rova (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) and Iulon Gagoshidze (Georgian National Museum Tbilisi) has discovered traces of wine inside an animal-shaped ceramic vessel (circa 3,000 BC), probably used for cultic activities. The vessel has an animal-shaped body with three small feet and a pouring...

Scientists conducted tests on ancient pottery jars and funnels found at the Mijiaya archaeological site in China’s Shaanxi province. The analyses revealed traces of oxalate — a beer-making byproduct that forms a scale called “beerstone” in brewing equipment — as well as residues from a variety of ancient grains and plants. These grains included broomcorn millets, an Asian wild grain known as “Job’s tears,” tubers from plant roots, and barley. Barley is used to make beer because it has high levels of amylase enzymes that promote the conversion of starches into sugars during the fermenting process. It was first cultivated...

Winston Churchill arrived in the United States for a long (40 stop) lecture tour in December of 1931, and shortly after his arrival was struck by a car while crossing the street. A cab carried him off to Lenox Hill Hospital where he was treated for a deep gash to the head, a fractured nose, fractured ribs, and severe shock. He spent two weeks in the hospital, where he also developed pleurisy. Six weeks after the accident, he resumed an reduced 14-stop version of the tour, despite his fears that he would prove unfit. Dr. Otto Pickhardt, Lenox Hill’s admitting...

FEW things arouse such warm adulation and sharp denunciation as alcohol. It is beloved by some and despised by others, and its consumption is governed by legal and religious rules. Wine is central to Christian rites but is widely considered by Muslims to be forbidden by the Quran. It is also the subject of debate within the scientific community: some researchers contend that alcohol, particularly wine, has health benefits, but others disagree. Pro-oenological forces point to a large body of evidence demonstrating wine’s positive effect on both the cardiovascular system and longevity. This viewpoint was given additional support this week...

Back in the day - we're talking WAY back in the day - beer was brewed with malt, and bread, and honey and wine . . . and just about anything that could be fermented. How the ancients brewed - and how you can too! Archaeology and beer seem to go together, and it’s not just because a cold brew helps wash the dust from your teeth after a long day on the digs. I’m an archaeologist by profession and a homebrewer by avocation. Lots of archaeologists brew their own, and those who don’t often have a passion for more...

In the mid-seventh century, Egypt was conquered by Muslim armies. The pressure of the invading army, advancing south along the Nile Valley, stopped the Christian kingdom of Makuria. The relics of this civilization have been discovered by PoznaÅ„ archaeologists in the area of the Letti Basin, about 350 km north of Khartoum. Makuria was a powerful kingdom, which existed from the sixth to the fourteenth century between II and V cataracts of the Nile. For several centuries its power reached even farther north almost to the modern Aswan... Now archaeologists confirmed the presence of previously known sites, but also discovered...

Like a Big Mac or a Coke, a Budweiser is one of the global economy’s more reliable pleasures, cheaply available almost everywhere. Historically, like the double-pattie burger and the iconic cola, the global dominance of light, fizzy, relatively bland, central European-style lager — from Budweiser to Molson and Corona — relied as much on cleanliness and consistency as it did on taste, as anyone who has tasted a Bud can tell you. In a talk to a gastronomy conference at the University of Toronto Mississauga this weekend, food historian Jeffrey Pilcher will argue that lager conquered the world, after first...

Made from ancient grape varieties grown in Pompeii, 'Villa dei Misteri' has to be one of the world's most exclusive wines. The grapes are planted in exactly the same position, grown using identical techniques and grow from the same soil the city's wine-makers exploited until Vesuvius buried the city and its inhabitants in AD 79. In the late 1800s, archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli first excavated some of the city's vineyards from beneath three metres of solid ash. The digs turned up an almost perfect snapshot of ancient wine-growing - and thirteen petrified corpses, huddled against a wall. Casts were made of...

PITTSBORO, N.C. (AP) -- Mead, that drink of viking saga and medieval verse, is making a comeback. But this ain't your ancestors' honey wine. "It's not just for the Renaissance fair anymore," says Becky Starr, co-owner of Starrlight Mead, which recently opened in an old woven label mill in this little North Carolina town. In fact, this most ancient of alcoholic libations hasn't been this hot since Beowulf slew Grendel's dam and Geoffrey Chaucer fell in with the Canterbury pilgrims at the Tabard.

The General's Eggnog One quart of cream One quart of milk A dozen eggs One pint of brandy A half pint of rye A quarter pint of rum A quarter pint of sherry Christmas of 1826 was snowy, cold and lonely for the cadets of West Point. Though called "men" they were really teenage boys -- some as young as 17 -- and they wanted to celebrate Christmas. Young Jefferson Davis, future president of the Confederate States of America, was amongst them. But West Point then, as it is now, was a house of order and discipline. The military...

Good afternoon/evening FReepers. Yep, it is Beer Thirty Time Once Again!Happiness is a bubbling airlock! And a Cold Home Brew BEER Good evening/afternoon brewers and winemakers. My wife and I are heading back to Mississippi from our new digs in Texas mid week next week to check on the house and property we own there. There will not be a beer/wine thread next week and possibly the next week. I do have another Honey Ale kit to brew up when I get back to Texas. I have decided not to brew it yet because I want to be here to...

Good afternoon/evening FReepers. Yep, it is Beer Thirty Time Once Again!Happiness is a bubbling airlock! BEER Good evening/afternoon brewers and winemakers. Nothing brewed at the Red Devil Brew house this week. Just enjoying a few home brews.Tip: If you have ever been disappointed with your homebrews not developing a nice long lasting head or they seem to be over carbonated and really heady when you pour a glass of your homebrew you might want to try cleaning your glass or mug. Use a mixture of equal parts of Baking Soda and salt then add a little water to make a...

Liquor is abundant in Arabic culture, its role a liquid of material and spiritual pleasure; considering that the Arab heritage is poetic as well as literary, liquor and other spirits abound in these works, their presence being felt in many types of poetic works. This makes liquor an element in reading material, a depiction meant to show splendor and fame, or a catchall term for drinks similar to it. So that one may attempt to approach the poetic truth, characteristics are attributed to liquor, like being a drink with the ability to transcend that which is sensual or habitual (any...

A 3,400-year-old Canaanite fort discovered in the heart of the modern Israeli city of Nahariya will be incorporated into a residential high-rise to be built at the spot. The Bronze Age citadel apparently served as an administrative center serving Mediterranean mariners... It had been destroyed at least four times by fire and was rebuilt each time... Among the artifacts discovered in the ruined citadel's rooms are ceramic figurines with human and animal forms, bronze weapons, and pottery vessels that hadn't been made locally -- they had been imported. That is further testimony to the extensive trading relations among the peoples...

BEIJING (Reuters) - The French used grapes, Russians fermented potatoes, Koreans put ginseng in their drink and Mexicans distilled cactus plants to make fiery tequila. Now China is introducing fish wine. Sun Keman, an entrepreneur in the northeastern port city of Dalian, has formed the Dalian Fisherman's Song Maritime Biological Brewery, with a plan to use his background in the fishing industry to make fish into wine. "Different from China's thousands of years of brewing, the brewery will clean, boil, and ferment fish for making wine," the official Xinhua news agency reported. The company already had orders from Japan, Russia...

The sharing of food and alcoholic beverages is extremely important today as in the past because provides a wealth of information on societies where this occurred. So far however, most of these practices known through archaeology have been primarily those undertaken by people from the same individual community or regional district. The Bronze Age site of Roca (2) in Southern Italy, has produced clear evidence for the existence at this place of one of the earliest inter-cultural feasting 'party' in Mediterranean Europe, dating to c.a. 1200 BC. This small (about 3 hectares nowadays, although it was larger in the past)...

Abstract The aging process is a universal phenomenon shared by all living organisms. The identification of longevity genes is important in that the study of these genes is likely to yield significant insights into human senescence. In this study, we have identified Tequila as a novel candidate gene involved in the regulation of longevity in Drosophila melanogaster. We have found that a hypomorphic mutation of Tequila (Teq f01792), as well as cell-specific downregulation of Tequila in insulin-producing neurons of the fly, significantly extends life span. Tequila deficiencyâ€“induced life-span extension is likely to be associated with reduced insulin-like signaling, because Tequila...

HEFER VALLEY, Israel â€” The new crisp, acidic and mineral white from a high-end Israeli winery was aged for eight months â€” or, depending on how you look at it, at least 1,800 years. The wine, called marawi and released last month by Recanati Winery, is the first commercially produced by Israelâ€™s growing modern industry from indigenous grapes. It grew out of a groundbreaking project at Ariel University in the occupied West Bank that aims to use DNA testing to identify â€” and recreate â€” ancient wines drunk by the likes of King David and Jesus Christ. Eliyashiv Drori, the...

A crate of Scotch whisky that has been frozen in Antarctic ice for more than a century is being slowly thawed by New Zealand museum officials. The crate of whisky was recovered earlier this year - along with four other crates containing whisky and brandy - beneath the floor of a hut built by British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton during his 1908 Antarctic expedition. Four of the crates were left in the ice, but one labelled Mackinlay's whisky was brought to the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch on New Zealand's South Island, where officials said it was being thawed in a...

The world's oldest malt whisky - costing up to £10,000 a bottle - went on sale today. The Mortlach 70-year-old Speyside was sampled by a select group of tasters at a ceremony in Edinburgh Castle. Bottles of the rare piece of Scotland's 'liquid history' have now hit the market. Only 54 full-size bottles, costing £10,000 each, and 162 smaller bottles at £2,500 have been made available. The whisky has been released under Gordon and MacPhail's Generations brand. It was filled into its cask on October 15 1938 on the order of John Urquhart, the grandfather of the firm's joint managing...

Scotch whisky meant to warm Antarctic explorers retrieved after century locked in ice Associated Press WELLINGTON, New Zealand - This Scotch has been on the rocks for a century. Five crates of Scotch whisky and two of brandy have been recovered by a team restoring an Antarctic hut used more than 100 years ago by famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. Ice cracked some of the bottles that had been left there in 1909, but the restorers said Friday they are confident the five crates contain intact bottles "given liquid can be heard when the crates are moved." New Zealand Antarctic...

That's the spirit! Cases of Mackinlay's 'Rare Old' scotch whisky have been recovered from the ice outside Shackleton's Antarctic hut. What will it taste like? After some hype and anticipation news has emerged that the crates of whisky long suspected to have been entombed by ice outside Sir Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic hut have finally been recovered. A team from the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust have managed to extract five cases, three of Chas Mackinlay & Co's whisky and two containing brandy made by the Hunter Valley Distillery Limited, Allandale (Australia), which were abandoned by the expedition in 1909 as...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – This Scotch has been on the rocks for a century. Five crates of Scotch whisky and two of brandy have been recovered by a team restoring an Antarctic hut used more than 100 years ago by famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. Ice cracked some of the bottles that had been left there in 1909, but the restorers said Friday they are confident the five crates contain intact bottles "given liquid can be heard when the crates are moved."

<p>WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A beverage company has asked a team to drill through Antarctica's ice for a lost cache of some vintage Scotch whiskey that has been on the rocks since a century ago.</p>
<p>The drillers will be trying to reach two crates of McKinlay and Co. whiskey that were shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as part of his abandoned 1909 expedition.</p>

CAPE ROYDS, Antarctica — This spit of black volcanic rock that juts out along the coast of Antarctica is an inhospitable place. Temperatures drop below –50 Fahrenheit and high winds cause blinding snowstorms... But if you happen upon the small wooden hut that sits at Cape Royds and wriggled yourself underneath, you'd find a surprise stashed in the foot and a half of space beneath the floorboards. Tucked in the shadows and frozen to the ground are two cases of Scotch whisky left behind 100 years ago by Sir Ernest Shackleton after a failed attempt at the South Pole. Conservators...

In 2010,Ã‚Â researchers and conservators from the Antarctic Heritage Trust of New Zealand made quite the interesting discovery. Hidden beneath the hut legendary explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton used during his 1908 Antarctica expedition (known as the Nimrod) were five crates covered in ice: three containing whisky and two containing scotch! This wasnâ€™tÃ‚Â the onlyÃ‚Â discovery made by the Trust either; they also foundÃ‚Â a notebook and photos from similar expeditionsÃ‚Â on the continent.From: Youtube / Shackleton Whisky After the whisky was discovered, one crate was sent to New Zealand where it was thawed and displayed for the public at Canterbury Museum. Three of the bottles...

Obamacare's menu labeling regulation promises to be a disaster for the food and restaurant industries, as its implementation is both costly and extremely onerous. While its deleterious effects on the pizza, restaurant, and grocery industries have been most well known, it also has the potential to shutter an industry near and dear to Americans' hearts: craft beer. Since beer has a few too many calories for bureaucrats, the health law dictates that all brewers include a detailed calorie count on every type of beer produced. Failure to do so, according to Americans for Tax Reform, "means craft brewers will not be able...

Large 1,500-year-old winepress unearthed in area once known for wine production. A large, well-preserved 1,500-year-old winery has been exposed during a violent storm in the Sharon Plain region, located between the Mediterranean Sea and Samarian Hills, the Antiquities Authority announced Monday. According to IAA archeologist Alla Nagorski, the discovery was made off the Eyal Interchange several weeks ago when flooding and hail disrupted an excavation at the site, where natural gas lines are scheduled to be embedded. The northern part of the Sharon Plain is considered the most historical wine region in Israel, and is where the first roots of...

A comet with the nickname Happy Hour leaves a boozy trail equivalent to "500 bottles of wine per second" in its wake as it shoots through space. Scientists studying the comet, known as Lovejoy, have found its glowing trail is made up of alcohol and sugar. A study published by a group of scientists from NASA and European agencies observed the unusual comet as it rocketed alongside the sun on January 30, NASA reports. "You have alcohol and sugar, so that can lead to a 'happy hour' name, but I would not recommend anyone drink this water," team researcher Darek...

Unlike ales, lager beers differ little in flavor. But now, by creating new crosses among the relevant yeasts, Kevin Verstrepen, PhD, Stijn Mertens, and their collaborators have opened up new horizons of taste. The research is published in the September 25 Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The relative uniformity of flavor among lagers turned out to result in significant part from a lack of genetic diversity among the yeasts. Genetic studies showed that lager yeasts had resulted from just two crosses between the parent yeasts, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and S. eubayanus. The problem was...

Making the world a better place, one beer at a time. For each and every one of you, your own appreciation of beer is something deeply personal. The appreciation of Beer is also something that is universal. Beer Church is about the relationship of the two; your personal affection for beer, and humanity's overwhelming love of Beer. Beer Church is a celebration of Beer (with a capital "B"). Beer Church represents the "something larger than yourself" to which you belong by virtue of your very personal love for beer. Beer Church is about the one thing that we all have...

A Jim Beam warehouse in Kentucky was struck by lightning releasing 800,000 gallons of bourbon into a nearby lake. Then, the lake was hit by a 'firenado' setting the inflammable liquid alight. The firenado was caused when a bolt of lighting hit the ground setting a fire which was in the path of a tornado, which sucked up the flames, creating a terrifying spiraling inferno.

Tokyo-based Suntory Global Innovation Center, which has a division called Suntory Whiskey, launched a set of alcoholic beverages toward the International Space Station on Wednesday (Aug. 19) aboard Japan's fifth H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-5). The booze includes five different types of distilled spirits, Suntory representatives said. The robotic HTV-5 is scheduled to reach the orbiting lab on Monday (Aug. 24). But astronauts will not crack open a bottle to celebrate the freighter's arrival; the liquor is flying for purely scientific purposes. Suntory plans to conduct future experiments to see how the "mellowness" of sprits is affected by microgravity and a...

Shipwreck Could Hold Thousands of Litres of Rum • Sunken British warship the Lord Clive could hold “treasure worth millions”, including “vast stocks” of 250-year-old rum which will be recovered later this year. The wreck, which sunk off the coast of Uruguay, was discovered in 2004, but the Uruguyan government has only given permission for its recovery this year. Salvage of the ship, which was sunk by Spanish cannons in 1763, will require cranes, excavators and around 80 workers and is expected to begin within two months. The ship, which was constructed in Hull for the Royal Navy and was...

Biochemist Phillipe Jeandet.... who has analyzed the early 19-century bubbly, says there were surprising amounts of copper and iron in the wine. The copper most likely came from copper sulfate, which vintners used to kill mildew and fungus on growing grape vines, the report said. The nails used to hold the wooden storage barrels together probably account for the liquid’s high iron content, he said. Even after 170 years lying some 165 feet deep in the ancient sunken cargo vessel, the champagne corks had not deteriorated because, scientists say, there was liquid both inside and out. And, according to Andrew...

Full title: What would Jesus drink? Experts guess what wine was like in ancient times and what modern ones are similar Christ was a vintner. And if you heed the Scriptures, quite a good one, according to the maitre d' at the wedding in Cana. "... the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him, 'Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.'" (John 2:9-10). In ancient times, wine was precious and revered, mentioned more than 140 times in the Bible. As Easter and...

Some breweries have taken to resurrecting the flavors of ages past. Adventurous beer makers are extrapolating recipes from clues that archeologists have uncovered from old and even ancient brews found at historical sites. Now scientists have analyzed some of the oldest preserved beer samples from an 1840s' shipwreck to try to provide insight into how they were made. They report their findings in ACS' Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry. Brian Gibson and colleagues explain that in 2010, divers discovered an old schooner at the bottom of the Baltic Sea near Finland. Archeological evidence suggested the ship went down about...

On a typically misty morning in the west of Ireland, just outside the medieval town of Athenry, County Galway, archaeologist Declan Moore... is taking me to visit an unexcavated fulacht fiadh (pronounced FULL-ahk FEE-add), or fulachtaí fia in plural, the most common type of prehistoric archaeological site in Ireland. Better known as a "burnt mound" in the neighboring United Kingdom, where they are also found, there are nearly 6,000 recorded fulacht fiadh sites dotted around Ireland alone... When we arrive at the site, Moore shows me the basic features of a fulacht fiadh -- a horseshoe-shaped mound of soil and...

How Bronze Age man enjoyed his pint Declan Moore and Billy Quinn have an ancient beer theory Bronze Age Irishmen were as fond of their beer as their 21st century counterparts, it has been claimed. Two archaeologists have put forward a theory that one of the most common ancient monuments seen around Ireland may have been used for brewing ale. Fulacht fiadh - horseshoe shaped grass covered mounds - are conventionally thought of as ancient cooking spots. But the archaeologists from Galway believe they could have been the country's earliest breweries. To prove their theory that an extensive brewing tradition...

For the first time, grape seeds from the Byzantine era have been found. These grapes were used to produce "the Wine of the Negev" -- one of the finest and most renowned wines in the whole of the Byzantine Empire. The charred seeds, over 1,500 years-old, were found at the Halutza excavation site in the Negev during a joint dig by the University of Haifa and the Israel Antiquities Authority. "The vines growing in the Negev today are European varieties, whereas the Negev vine was lost to the world. Our next job is to recreate the ancient wine, and perhaps...

Phrygians were brewing with barley before it was cool. Resurrecting ancient beers and wines is a subtle alchemy, but Patrick McGovern knows all the tricks. He directs the Biomolecular Archaeology Project for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Many of his ancient brews are sold by Dogfish Head brewery in Delaware. How did you start making ancient drinks? One of the first we made was the Midas beverage, based on residues in bronze vessels recovered from the Midas tomb in Turkey, which dates from 700 B.C. These pointed to an unusual drink combining wine, barley...

More than 30 ancient anchors have been discovered near the small Sicilian island of Pantelleria. Leonardo Abelli of the University of Sassari says that the anchors were abandoned by the Carthaginians during the First Punic War more than 2,000 years ago. The Romans had captured the strategically located island with a fleet of more than 300 ships. “The Carthaginian ships that were stationing near Patelleria had no other choice than hiding near the northern coast and trying to escape. To do so, they cut the anchors free and left them in the sea. They also abandoned part of their cargo...

Enlarge Image Bottoms up. Lager, as we know it, is likely a hybrid of S. cerevisiae and a newly discovered yeast from Patagonia. Credit: Stephan Zabel/iStockphoto Lager may have its roots in Bavaria, but a key ingredient arrived from halfway around the world. Scientists have discovered that the yeast used to brew this light-colored beer may hail from Argentina. Apparently, yeast cells growing in Patagonian trees made their way to Europe and into the barrels of brewers. Through the ages, brewers have tried to make their beers better, for instance, by improving on taste or color or making them...

Did our Neolithic ancestors turn to agriculture so that they could be sure of a tipple? US Archaeologist Patrick McGovern thinks so. The expert on identifying traces of alcohol in prehistoric sites reckons the thirst for a brew was enough of an incentive to start growing crops... Here is how the story likely began -- a prehistoric human picked up some dropped fruit from the ground and popped it unsuspectingly into his or her mouth. The first effect was nothing more than an agreeably bittersweet flavor spreading across the palate. But as alcohol entered the bloodstream, the brain started sending...

This summer, how would you like to lean back in your lawn chair and toss back a brew made from what may be the world’s oldest recipe for beer? Called Chateau Jiahu, this blend of rice, honey and fruit was intoxicating Chinese villagers 9,000 years ago—long before grape wine had its start in Mesopotamia. University of Pennsylvania molecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern first described the beverage in 2005 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences based on chemical traces from pottery in the Neolithic village of Jiahu in Northern China. Soon after, McGovern called on Sam Calagione at the...